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You just finished a lovely dinner with your entire family at an upscale restaurant. You enjoyed before dinner drinks, a five course meal, dessert, and after dinner drinks. When you finished, your waiter brought a bill listing only the total cost of the dinner The bill did not include an itemization that explained the cost of each part of the dinner. Would you be satisfied with that? What would you do?

That is exactly what our government does in respect to how it spends our tax dollars. Instead of a level of transparency that would allow us to review how our money is being spent, it produces multiple thousand page budget bills designed to confuse and obfuscate. In 1974, Congress passed the Budget Control Act. It produced a step by step process fixing the dates that each step was to be completed. While it was a good idea, all it did was create another photo-op for elected officials. It gave the appearance they were actually doing something. The fact is, going back to 2010, Congress only followed the law twice. Following a budget isn’t a priority for those who are charged with spending other people’s money. Expecting elected representatives who are more interested in getting reelected than taking care of their constituents is whimsical, even delusional.

According to U.S. Government Budget Office data, since 1960, in all but 9 years the federal government confiscated a larger number of taxpayer dollars every year than it did the previous year. Even while enjoying increased revenues in 6 of every 7 years, our government ran a deficit in all but 3 years since 1960. The result is that today we have a breathtaking federal debt over $33 trillion. We will pay around $700 billion this year in interest on that debt. That number will increase dramatically as old, low interest rate, government bonds mature and are replaced by today’s higher interest rate bonds. To understand how much $33 trillion is, think of this. We could reduce this debt to zero if every American citizen, man woman and child, would send a check for $100,000 to the Treasury Dept. Perhaps we could convince the people of the world to help us out. We could reduce our national debt to zero if we could get a $4,125 check made payable to the U.S. Treasury from every man, woman, and child, ON EARTH!! Overwhelming isn’t it. Statistics like these are shocking and should anger every American taxpayer. Thousands of bureaucrats and elected representatives, from both political parties, have failed the American people. Their combination of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance, has placed the greatest nation on earth in danger of a financial catastrophe.

As I have repeatedly said, candidates have 2 goals when running for election. The first is to get elected. The second is to get reelected. It is, therefore, unrealistic for us to think our elected representatives would do anything that might reduce their chances of being reelected. That puts the onus on We the People. It is our responsibility to see that our representatives do what is in our best interest, not theirs. We must remember, they work for us. It seems everyone has forgotten that fact.

So what can we do? We are at a very good time in the election cycle for our voices to be heard. We must commit to attending, with a friend or three, the town hall meetings of all candidates. We have to find out what candidates think about our national debt, and tell them exactly what we think about it. Would they support cutting 10% from the budgets of every government department? As I mentioned in last week’s blog, that cut could be made without anyone noticing. Do you doubt it? Remember 2013? That was the last time the government was shut down. It is called sequestration. During sequestration the government is required to furlough all “non-essential” employees. The government furloughed 41% of its employees. How many of you own. or work for, a company that could survive if 41% of its employees were non-essential? I’m not suggesting a 40% cut, but 10% wouldn’t be missed.

While at the town hall meeting it is imperative we make it clear that we want a permanent end to the practice of “earmarks”. In the last omnibus spending bill, billions of dollars of earmarks were inserted into the thousand plus page bill. These are almost entirely examples of lawmakers taking our money to their home districts to curry favor with constituents and donors. When included with bills that fund Social Security, or the VA, they are certain to be passed. Passed without those voting for them even knowing they exist. If they are worthy of passage, let them stand the disinfectant known as daylight.

Let’s demand receipts. In May of 2014, the Department of Defense (DOD) contracted for the construction of a natural gas filling station in Afghanistan. It had recently paid $500,000 for a similar station in Pakistan. The station, when completed, ran about $42.5 million over budget. Yep, the American people paid $43 million for a gas station in Afghanistan. In typical government fashion, the DOD, the Pentagon, and their Inspector General, performed the perfect Sgt. Schultz imitation. Schultz was the German Sgt. in the weekly sitcom titled “Hogan’s Heroes” who was famous for his consistent response of “I know nothing” when questioned. The last I heard, the government was successful in stonewalling this issue until it finally went away. Taken by itself this is not even a rounding error in a gargantuan government budget. Tragically, there are countless pages of this kind of unexplained mismanagement throughout our government agencies. It is time for us to demand receipts, or to punish those who refuse to provide them.

We are running out of time to fix the problems created by big government. If we don’t start holding the miscreants feet to the fire we should prepare for a repeat of the late 1930s and early 1940s. We all know that big government is the problem. What is still unknown is, do we care enough to do something about it?

Thank you for your continued support of my blog. If you found it informative and/or interesting, please tell your friends about it. Bob